Buying property is a huge life milestone - whether it’s an investment, first home, or even upgrading/downsizing, it will always present a significant financial outlay and long-term debt, so it’s important to ensure you have a solid plan in place to help you get your property easier, with less pain and more money staying in your wallet. Here’s a few tips to help you start:

There can be a wide range of features in a house, and determining your baseline needs is important to keeping costs down by allowing you a more practical mindset, keeping you grounded when looking at properties. These features vary from person to person – for example a large kitchen area may be indispensable to one, a large backyard may be vital to another, even down to local utilities like internet access options or gas heating could wind up a dealbreaker for certain buyers.

It is important to be realistic when setting your needs – keep it to an absolute minimum and list the extra features as wants, letting you also shape the decision process with these in mind, as well as letting you save money by compromising on size, location or condition where able.

Some needs and wants can also be covered by renovation and/or remodelling, but it is important to take the costs for this work into account, especially given that it can wildly vary depending on variables in the process. If properly researched and quotes though, it can wind up saving more money to get a property with your needed features on the cheap.

Determining a budget when buying a house is typically an early step in the process, and will shape your future decisions and house-hunting. However, even when a budget is set, it can easily spiral out of control without closer management. This can typically happen when faced with the choice to go for more expensive properties with a wide range of extra features over more cost-effective options that still fit your needs. A good way of managing this is to lay out a minimum budget, a preferred budget, and a maximum budget.

A minimum budget is tempting to set very low – however you need to closely review the requirements you have for a home, then find the average cost of properties that feature your minimum needs.

Your preferred budget should be the value you are most prepared to outlay for your ideal purchase – if you found a house that was a good mesh between your needs and wants, what value would you pay and still feel like it was a fair deal?

Finally, your maximum budget is a set spending limit – keeping this value reasonably low compared to your preferred budget is important to prevent spiralling costs, and sticking to your budget will be vital. Make sure that the maximum value is such that you will still be able to reasonably meet repayments, as well as avoiding too much additional interest on the loan.

If you are considering going over your preferred budget, you need to ensure that you’re not spending above your maximum budget, while also keeping in mind how much you are paying above your minimum and your preferred budgets, which will give you a good look at how much you are really paying for the extras on the property.

Most of the time when making a purchase, the buck stops at the pricetag, however when purchasing property, there are a lot of hidden costs that can add a lot of pressure to your budget if not considered. Typical examples of these fees include Stamp Duty, Bank Fees, Conveyancing, Inspection fees and Moving Costs, let alone any potential repair or renovation fees. Ensure that you account for these costs while making your budget, as well as some emergency funds in case of accident or events not going to plan and you should do well